To hear Democratic VP nominee Tim Kaine switches to Spanish in the middle of a speech can be shocking. He speaks so fluently, with little warning that the language is going to switch, sometimes mid-paragraph, that you might find yourself adjusting your radio in case your tuner had locked into a Spanish station all of a sudden.
There was great anticipation that Hillary Clinton would ask a Latino to be her running mate, and there were three Latinos on her short list of seven possibilities. But she chose Kaine, the ultimate nice guy, “a guy who shovels the snow from your driveway before you wake up,” as one commenter said. White. Bland. So not Latino.
But he’s lived in Honduras, and he speaks Spanish. Will that matter? According to Mark Hugo Lopez, who directs Hispanic research at Pew and spoke to NPR, Spanish-speaking candidates don’t wow Latino voters the way they used to.
We are now seeing many young Latinos grow up in a household where only English is spoken, while the share that live in a household where only Spanish spoken is on the decline…
It’s one that’s become much more aware of its position in the United States, and also its potential impact in elections. And while speaking Spanish is great, today it’s not necessarily the case that speaking Spanish will be the one thing that will win a Hispanic voter’s vote.
Celina Vasquez, a delegate from Texas, spoke to the NPR reporter from the Democratic convention and said that for Latinos, speaking Spanish in this country comes with baggage.
VASQUEZ: Our culture and our history, it has been one of discrimination, specifically to our language and not allowing us to speak our language in schools and actually being punished for it.
But it’s not as if Latinos will punish Kaine for speaking Spanish. Being bilingual is a net plus. But these days it takes a lot more to reach Latinos, and “speaking their language” doesn’t have much to do with speaking Spanish.